Sleep Deprivation And Your Career

How Sleep Deprivation Affects Your Career (This Will Surprise You)

You’re a hustler. You grind hard, chasing your dreams, and the last thing you care about is sleep, because sleep is the cousin of death, right? Kinda, but not really.

We all need to stop bragging about how little we sleep because we work so damn hard. I’ll be the first to admit that I have been guilty of this in the past many times.

When my co-founders and I first founded Benchmark Intelligence, I was so terrified of failure that many nights I would only sleep about 4 hours because there was always so much work that needed to be done. I wore that lack of sleep like a badge of honor. I’d always brag about how hard I was working and how little sleep I was getting on social media; I even wrote about it a couple of times on here. My friends and I would have sick pissing contests where we bragged about who slept less and was still “killing it.”

However, after I eventually burned out, I switched up my plan of attack and made it a point to focus on quality work and to try to get 7-8 hours of sleep, with a minimum of 6 hours of sleep. Even though I work slightly fewer hours now, I get a lot more done during the time I do work because I’m not a walking zombie any more.

I see many young entrepreneurs and young professionals making the same mistakes that I used to. Living off Monster energy drinks, listening to Kevin Gate’s “I don’t get tired,” and using the hashtag “teamnosleep” on all of their social media posts. This has to stop. Here’s why:

It’s Not Cool To Brag, Bro

Listen, I’m not saying that there won’t be long nights and early mornings while on the road to your dreams. You will definitely experience some from time to time, especially when first starting out, but there are two important things you should realize.

The first is that that kind of lifestyle is not sustainable. I could tell you a bunch of statistics, including how you can go much longer without food than sleep, and how important sleep is to your health, but I’m pretty sure you don’t need to understand science to know how important sleep is. There is a good chance sleeping little will hurt your career more than it will help you because we all tend to make more mistakes and bad decisions when we are sleep deprived.

Second, is that when you do have those all-nighter stretches to get stuff done, don’t brag about it. It’s very douchey/bro-ish. Sleep deprivation isn’t cool. Sleep is an elusive elixir. We should celebrate when it graces us for a full eight hours. We shouldn’t brag about hurting our bodies. Plus, it doesn’t look cool, and honestly the sleep deprivation competition is no longer a thing.

Quality > Quantity

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in the first year of business was that not all hours of work are equal. When I was sleeping very little, the hours that I worked were not always productive, especially towards the end of the day when I was super tired. When you sleep ample amounts, your hours tend to be much more productive, as you don’t tire out as easily. Remember to only do all-nighters sparingly and when really necessary. When you're well rested, you can accomplish the same amount of work in almost 50%s-75% of the time compared to when you’re only running on a few hours of sleep.

Too many entrepreneurs and professionals focus on being busy rather than productive. Just because you worked throughout the night doesn’t mean those hours were necessarily productive. Some people just want to be “seen” working versus focusing on a task and getting it done in sometimes half the time. When it comes to working, you should always focus on quality hours versus just trying to do as many hours as possible.

Prioritize Your Time

One last thing to understand is that you can still work long days (10-12 hours) and get ample amounts of sleep; it’s all about priorities. To be completely honest, when I started forcing myself to get 3-4 more hours of sleep each night, I only lost about 1-2 hours of work each day. All I did was prioritize my time and stop doing things like watching TV or spending too much time on YouTube. During the week, I pretty much do nothing but work, work out and sleep. On any given day, I’m working about 10-12 hours and still getting ample sleep.

I’m not saying that you need to work 10-12 hours a day — focus on quality hours and find out what works for you. The main point I’m trying to make is that you can still work a lot and get healthy amounts of sleep; you’re just going to need to prioritize and cut things out of your life that don’t contribute towards your success or happiness.

Whether you’re chasing your dreams or trying to find a work-life balance, just remember the importance of sleep. The best thing you can do for your career each day is to make sure you get a healthy amount of sleep, eat a good breakfast, drink a little of water and attack each day with all cylinders firing.

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